Eat a hefty early dinner before you hit up Saturday night's Dragon Street art openings, because a whole mess of galleries want to ply you full of wine and point you towards their latest installments of glorious eye candy. Here's a helpful guide -- think CliffsNotes for booze and art -- to navigating nine different galleries in a few, quick hours. Wear your running shoes and start stretching now. On your mark, get set.....
Kick the night off at Galleri Urbane and Cris Worley Fine Arts, which sit side-by-side at 2277 Monitor Street and open at 5 p.m. Urbane is presenting selected pieces from "Asian Invasion," by artist Theo Wujcik, who takes contemporary heavy-hitters from the Chinese art scene and gives them a pop, by transforming their images into comic-style renderings. Cris Worley's show, "Hinterland," is a solo gig for Memphis artist Maysey Craddock who weaves uncommon mediums, like gouache and silk threads into her double duty as painter and sculptor. Next, drive over to Conduit Gallery (1626 C Hi Line Dr.), it's a quick step away from the fray and features the monochromatically hued landscapes by Johnny Robertson, and a contemporary take on traditional Beijing images by C. Meng from 6 to 8 p.m.
Now it's time to enter the Dragon. Leave your car near Holly Johnson Gallery (1411 Dragon St.), and start your journey there. HJG airs "Linear Landscape" by Jacob El Hanani from 6 to 8 p.m., so you'll get a first look at his ten latest ink drawings. Jacob almost mystically organizes shapes composed of tiny marks, lines or Hebrew letters. Next, kick it down the address dial to Galerie Zuger (1215 Dragon Street) for "An Elysian Vision" by Britten Roetzel from 6 to 9 p.m. Open your third eye to properly absorb this show inspired by "the depths of the ocean to the outer limits." Sounds poppin'.
Our favorite photography-rich gallery PDNB (1202 Dragon Street) is bringing out the big lenses from 5 to 8 p.m. with a group show called "From the Back Room." You're going to want to buy that Jimmy Katz picture of the sideshow banners, but you can't have it. I called dibs. Cohn Drennan (1107 Dragon) is next. From 6 to 8 p.m. enjoy the dueling works in "Blair Blayre," an MFA thesis project by repeat Drennan favorites Michael Blair and Blayre Stiller. While Stiller explores a human connection with and reaction to imperfect bodies in her drawings, Michael experiments with the taut line between childishness and sophistication in his paintings.
Never ignore a Plush Gallery (918 Dragon St.) joint; Saturday's 6 to 9 p.m. affair boasts "Nick Barbee: Proclamation." The Rice and University of Houston teacher is presenting everything from domestic scene drawings to "plaster casts of disembodied feet in ordinary, colored socks." You had us at "disembodied feet." End it all off with "Dream Continuum," the group show hosted by Circuit 12 Contemporary (1130 Dragon St. Suite 150), which pulls the latest hours being open from 6 to 10 p.m. this evening. This exhibition unfocuses deep into the shape-shifting land of R.E.M.s where space and scale are manipulated for reasons that we cannot understand while awake.